


something in the water

by wreckingtomlinson



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, I don't even know where to start with the tags for this so I'll leave it, Loch Ness Monster, M/M, Paranormal Investigators, lilo is an estalished open relationship, so the tomlinshaw is just like a one-time thing, you know what the relationships really aren't even that important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-24 21:57:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4936840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreckingtomlinson/pseuds/wreckingtomlinson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Louis and Liam own a coffeeshop-slash-paranormal investigation service that's called in to check out the newest wave of Loch Ness Monster sightings. Liam has a desk calendar, Zayn designs a trap that involves way too much netting, Harry gets stuck in said netting, and it ends up being Louis' job to distract a nosy local reporter named Nick. And Niall falls off the boat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	something in the water

**Author's Note:**

> well well well here we are, the Loch Ness Monster hunter au that nobody asked for!!
> 
> s/o to Michelle for being an a+ person and best cheerleader and most helpful person ever
> 
> title is from Carrie Underwood's "Something in the Water" even though that song is about religion but hey, water, bear with me please
> 
> disclaimer: all persons depicted are fictitious, the name of the paper that Nick writes for is made up, and i have never been to this area and have limited knowledge of sciencey things so apologies for inaccuracies in advance!
> 
> enjoy!!

“Sorry, ma’am, we only do paranormal investigations,” Liam apologises to the woman on the phone. “The police will probably be better at helping you find your cat.”

Out in the cafe, Louis rolls his eyes and goes back to trying to clean up a particularly stubborn coffee stain. “When are people going to learn that ‘paranormal’ means shit science can’t explain? Missing cats are very easily explainable.”

“You don’t know that,” Harry points out, putting a new tray of chocolate chip cookies in the display case. “Maybe an alien came and took her cat. That would make it paranormal.”

“Haz, please,” Louis whines, dropping the rag on the counter and headbutting Harry’s bicep until he gets attention. Harry indulges him, always does, and ruffles Louis’ hair for a minute before gently pushing him off and closing up the glass case. “You’ve got crumbs in my hair.”

Normally Louis isn’t this whiny—though Liam would say otherwise—but it’s been a dry two months. The coffee shop is doing just fine, but it’s the business they run out of the back rooms that’s been slow. He and Liam have been investigating paranormal activity since they were in uni together and someone on the fifth floor of the dormitory thought his room was haunted. (It was. Louis still hasn’t come up with an explanation for the odd glowy goo that covered the desk in that room. Liam thought it was glow-in-the-dark lube, but Louis knew better. He’d tried it and it _definitely_ didn’t feel like that.) It had started as a hobby, but once Louis realised people actually _paid_ for investigators to come and check for ghosts, he and Liam decided to make a living doing it. The coffee shop pays their bills, but Louis lives for the special calls. It makes him feel like some kind of real-life Ghostbuster, or something, minus the cool jumpsuit. The most he got Liam to do was get the same colour polo shirt as him.

“I did not,” Harry mutters, but humours Louis anyway and dusts imaginary crumbs off the top of his head. “You lads really need a job, don’t you?”

In the back room off the kitchen, Liam hangs up the phone. “Since when were we London’s cat-finding service?” he asks nobody in particular.

Harry’s dashing back to talk to Liam, presumably about his alien theory, so Louis picks up the rag, puts it over an upside-down cup, and runs after Harry, screaming, “Whooo, it’s a ghost!”

“Lou!” Harry exclaims, whirling around and snatching the rag off the cup. “Now we can’t use this cup!”

Louis shrugs and puts it in the back next to his jacket. He can use it at home, like he does with all the other cups he messes around with.

“Louis, we have at least six of those at home,” Liam reminds him, swiveling around in his desk chair and reaching out his foot to bop Louis’ ankle.

“Aw, Li, what’s one more?” Louis gently places the cup atop Liam’s head, trying to get it to balance, just as the bell tied to the front door rings.

“Customer!” Harry calls. “You and Liam can be cute at home.” Louis sighs as he walks back out to the counter and the cup falls off of Liam’s head.

~

The next day is no better in terms of calls, but Niall is in that day and there are plenty of customers in the coffee shop, both of which keep Louis on his toes. He’s in good form, smiling and even flirting with a few of the cute boys who come in for their morning coffees, but Liam intimidates them all by standing rather authoritatively behind Louis and glaring at them before they can so much as wink at Louis.

“Liam,” Louis cajoles as the last customer walks away, “something wrong, babe? You’re scaring all the cute boys away.”

“I didn’t like any of them,” Liam mutters with a cute little frown, and oh, Louis knows what this is about.

“Do you want to rethink the open relationship thing?” he asks quietly as Liam huffs and scratches his head.

“No, it’s not that. I just didn’t like any of them,” Liam says with a shrug. “They just didn’t seem like they cared much about you, just your arse.”

Louis laughs at that, shifting his weight to cock one hip out. “You love my arse and you know it.”

He’d be lying if he says he doesn’t pride himself on the smile Liam cracks at that. “Everyone does.”

“You know you always get it first.” Louis rises up on the balls to his feet to press a quick kiss to Liam’s cheek as the phone starts to ring.

“Mine!” Louis screams, already sprinting to the back room so he doesn’t have to deal with the stream of customers waiting to order their coffee. “Hello, Legend Investigators of London Organisation,” he answers.

“Hey, Lou!” greets an amiable male voice. Louis recognises it instantly, the sound throwing him back to his uni days.

“Hey, Aiden! What’ve you been up to, mate? How’s Inverness?” He plops down in the desk chair and spins around. Liam and Niall can deal with the post-lunch rush.

“Been alright, been alright. The company’s doing well. We’re working on a few new devices that we’ll test at the hospital, but everyone’s feeling pretty good. How’s business?”

“Pitiful,” Louis whinges. “Haven’t had a proper job in two months.”

“Well, listen. I’ve got one for you. Loch Ness Monster sightings are up.”

Louis groans. “Again? You know that stuff always goes in phases.”

“Yeah, well, phase or not, all of a sudden everyone’s talking about it. Might be interesting?” Aiden’s voice lilts into a question by the end.

Louis shrugs. “Who’s paying?”

A pause. “It was more of a suggestion…”

Of course he wants to take it on. It’s the most exciting call they’ve ever gotten. It’s a big trip, is the thing, and would probably require at least four of them to take on a job of this scale and prominence.

“I’ll make a few calls, ask around,” Aiden adds, probably taking the silence as hesitation. “Someone will.”

“Let me know and ring me when you find out, yeah? Keep in touch, bastard.” Louis hangs up with a grin.

~

The call comes the next day. They’ve got a sponsor.

“Simon Cowell,” Aiden tells Louis over the phone as he’s changing the filter in the espresso machine. “He’s like, some really rich bloke who’s really into conspiracy theories. Based in London, but owns a big part of Intercity Railways, which goes to Inverness, so he’s interested in the monster sightings. Brings tourism up. He said he’ll pay for transportation and lodging, plus your usual fees for a team of up to five. You in?”

“Of fucking course.”

~

They’re scheduled to leave on Sunday. Thursday of the week before, Louis and Liam stay late after closing, sitting in the back room trying to decide to who to ask to go on the job with them.

“Zayn’s good. I want Zayn,” Louis says decisively.

“But Zayn can’t swim, and we’re dealing with a monster in a lake,” Liam points out. He has a very good point, but Louis knows Zayn is one of their best men.

“But he’s our best strategist and planner. We need him,” Louis insists. “He doesn’t even have to go near the water. He can plan from land.”

“Alright, I’ll put him down for now.” Liam writes _Zayn_ _Malik_ neatly on a piece of scrap paper. “What about Perrie?”

Louis shakes his head. “No, she just does ghosts, remember?”

“Riiiiiight. Jesy?”

“Took next week off to visit her family. What about Niall? We’re gonna need someone friendly to keep the locals on our side,” Louis suggests.

Liam doesn’t say anything, and Louis jumps on the hesitation. “You know how good he can be. He’s the best chance we’ve got at getting people to work with us. Or at least tolerate us. And you know how much he loves the Loch Ness Monster stories.”

“Fine, so you want Niall and Zayn?”

“Yeah, what do you think?”

Liam looks at the two names on the paper, forehead creased in thought. Then: “Call Zayn tonight, and I’ll tell Niall.”

~

The next morning, as Louis is opening the shop, he hears the side door open and shut.

“Hazza!” Louis singsongs as he stacks the coffee cups under the counter. “Morning.”

Harry makes a pouty face at him, to which Louis frowns and stands up. “What’s the matter?”

“Niall said you guys are going to Scotland next week,” Harry says, his frown deepening.

“Yeah…?”

Harry glances down at his scuffed boots. “Nobody told me.”

“Oh, my god,” Louis mutters as realisation dawns on him. “You’re not—you don’t think we left you out on purpose, do you?”

He can’t see Harry’s face, but his long curls bounce up and down as he nods, and Louis groans inwardly. Harry is a lovely person, but he’s their baker; his job is solely in the coffee shop part of things. He’s not part of the investigative team and he’d never come on any other jobs, so why was he asking now?

He really should pat Harry on the back and tell him that it was nothing personal, but Louis feels himself frown at seeing Harry think he’s been purposely ostracised. So he turns on his heel and locates Liam, who’s sat at the desk in the back room furiously typing something on his laptop.

“Can Haz come, too?”

Liam turns around in the desk chair so abruptly it spins around for a full revolution before he stops it. “What?” is all he spits out.

Louis jerks a thumb in the direction of the front. “He thinks we left him out on purpose.”

“Well, we kind of did, but only because he’s not part of the team. Not the paranormal team.”

Which is exactly what Louis thought earlier. But Aiden had mentioned that their sponsor—Simon—was willing to pay for a team of _up_ _to_ five. Surely an extra pair of eyes can’t hurt? He says as much to Liam, who sighs and rests his head in his hands.

Seeing he’s not getting anywhere, Louis tries a different tactic. “Li,” he says sweetly, “you know how you’ve always wanted me to call you Daddy when we fuck?”

The way Liam just about chokes on his own saliva brings a smugness to Louis’ little smile. “Lou…”

“I’m just saying.” Blinking slowly and letting his lashes fan out over his cheeks the way he knows they do, he very deliberately drops to his knees and runs his hands up the tops of Liam’s thighs. “Can’t he come? He won’t do any harm. He’s a good lad, you know that. And he’s the best baker we’ve ever had. Should keep him on our good side, yeah?” As he talks, his hands creep up Liam’s legs, working at the zipper of his jeans and popping the button open.

They emerge from the back room a half hour later just in time for the shop opening, Louis with a smug expression and Liam with a distant one.

“Feel like coming to Scotland for a few weeks?” Liam asks Harry while Louis grins like a Cheshire cat.

~

Sunday afternoon sees the five of them two hours into the trip, sitting in the first-class car of the train to Inverness. Four of the seats share a central table, while the fifth is across the aisle at another table, but no one is in the seat opposite so they use it for their backpacks and rotate seats every so often.

Liam has a weekly desk calendar—seriously, where the fuck did that come from—open on the table, and is carefully pencilling in travel notes while Zayn sketches in one corner and Louis draws phalluses in another. “We’ll be in Dru—Drumnadrochit,” he says slowly. Louis thinks he does a marvelous job of not butchering the pronunciation. “Simon got us rooms at the Loch Ness Hotel, which is a little over two kilometres from the shores of the lake, so that’s not too bad,” he’s saying. “He said he got two rooms, so we can share—”

“You and Louis can have your own. I’m not sharing with you two,” Zayn decides, not looking up from his detailed sketch of a castle.

“Just keep it down, don’t know how soundproof the walls are,” Niall adds. Across the aisle, Harry snorts out a laugh and offers his fist for a fist bump.

“Please stay focused!” Liam complains, pulling a spiral-bound notebook from his bag. “I hope we all brought our field notebooks?”

Harry, Niall, and Zayn nod. Louis points to his bag with a nonsensical mutter and starts on his seventh dick drawing.

“Louis!”

“Yes, Liam?” he asks patiently.

“Have you been paying any attention at all?”

“Yeah, yeah. Drumnadrochit, the Loch Ness Hotel, my field notebook’s in my rucksack, and you spelled Drumnadrochit wrong,” Louis says, reaching across the table to point at Liam’s error on the calendar.

“God damn it, Louis,” Liam mutters, turning his pencil over and furiously erasing. “Where even was I? Oh, he’s booked us for two weeks, but if it ends up taking longer we can stay, just have to let someone know. And as far as boats go, he’s made a deal with some locals with sonar detectors and we can use their boats. I’ll, uh, get their names when we get there. Any questions?”

“Helicopters?” Zayn asks.

“What about them?”

“Do we have access to one? I mean, it might help to see what’s going on from the air. Also, the loch’s 22 miles long, so if we were to try to look for evidence on land, a helicopter might be useful and take less time,” Zayn points out. “And there’ve been those sightings with like, mysterious ripples on the surface even when the loch is still and there’s no wind, but I think those have all been from boats and there’s only so much you can see from that angle.”

“Let me talk to some people and see if we can get access to a helicopter, then. May be a few days though so we’ll start on land.”

“Sounds okay.”

“Well, I, for one, am going to start with a nap,” Louis declares, reclining his seat and scrunching his jumper up to put under his head, purposefully ignoring Liam’s protests. Whatever, Niall will fill him in when they arrive.

Niall doesn’t fill him in on anything when they arrive, because according to him, “You know Liam, he just goes on and on and it’s like we’re a class of five-year-olds on a school trip. We’ve done this before, we know how it goes.”

They arrive at the hotel after dinner, with the sun only just starting to sink in the sky. Aiden’s there to greet them in the lobby, and Louis greets him with an excited hug.

“Good to finally see you, mate!” he exclaims, patting his old friend on the back. “You gonna be staying with us, then?”

Aiden nods. “Yeah, I had these two weeks planned for a holiday anyway but I wasn’t going to be doing much. Till now! I’ve got my own room, though, and I probably won’t be around during the investigations unless you ask. But I’ll ask some of the locals and tourists who’ve been seeing weird stuff lately, and let you know.”

Louis grins. “You know, if you ever find yourself back in London, I know of a place that could use your help.”

Liam, meanwhile, has been checking them into the hotel, and turns around with the key cards in hand. “Right then, Zayn, Harry, and Niall in one room, me and Lou in the other?”

In lieu of answering, Louis simply plucks both packets of keys out of Liam’s hand and gives one to Harry. “Right then, 117 and 119. Done.”

“Can we get dinner?” Niall asks. “I’m starving.”

They end up dropping their bags and equipment off in the rooms before finding a small restaurant for a bite to eat. Niall is thrilled with the number of whiskey varieties they have, and declares it his mission to try as many as he can during their stay. The food is good, the atmosphere friendly and welcoming, and Louis is at least 80% sure he saw the female barkeep giving Liam eyes.

Louis ends up stumbling back to the hotel room early, clinging to Liam and laughing too loud. They fall into bed, and Louis thinks he stays relatively quiet but the looks his friends give him as they all meet for breakfast early in the morning tell him otherwise.

“Christ, keep it down, would you,” Niall mutters. “I didn’t need to know you people do the daddy thing.”

“Moving on!” Liam sets his notebook down on the table with a slightly louder bang than necessary, making Louis’ teacup rattle in its saucer. “Right. I’m going to get in touch with Simon today and see if we can get access to a helicopter. But I do think we should start doing some investigating around the shores today. So that means plaster cast sets, field kits, the usual.”

“Plaster cast sets?” Harry asks, taking a bite of his toast.

“Mhm.” Louis nods. “Like if we were to find a footprint or something in the mud, so instead of just taking a photo, we can make a cast of it so we know the dimensions and stuff and take it back with us.”

“It’s a plan, then. We’ll focus around the main towns where the reports have come from for now. Today we’ll go around here, since the majority of the reports have been coming in from this area. If we don’t find anything, then maybe tomorrow we’ll drive up to some of the other towns, but we’ll see where today leaves us first,” Liam decides.

The only times Louis doesn’t argue with Liam is when they’re on a job. In the coffee shop and at home, he needles all he likes, but when they’re in the middle of an investigation, he knows his brand of teasing by being difficult will hurt him, too. So he wisely shuts up, and everyone else seems to take the hint.

It’s a little past nine o’clock by the time they get down to the shores, equipment packed neatly, wellies and waders on, and two-way radios turned on. Liam proposes they split up.

“We could do a team of three and a team of two,” he suggests, “and each go, say, five or six miles in opposite directions, then come back and we’ll regroup.”

“Split up?” Niall echoes. “Have you never seen an episode of _Scooby-Doo_? Bad things always happens when groups of five split up.”

“That makes Liam Fred,” Louis mutters, causing Niall to break into a fit of laughter.

Liam ignores both of them. “I’ll go with Zayn. Louis, take Harry and Niall.”

“Great, I get the newbie.” Louis elbows Harry and grins to let him know he’s joking. Harry, on the other hand, looks extremely pale. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Is this stuff dangerous?” he asks.

Louis pauses, trying to think of a way to be honest but not scare him too much. It’s his first investigation, after all. “It can be,” he begins slowly, “but if you’ve got common sense and your wits about you, you’ll be fine. Don’t trip, don’t break anything, and tell me or Niall right away if you notice something important or strange.”

“What counts as important or strange?”

“Anything,” Louis decides after a beat. “Literally anything. Footprints, materials caught on branches, any movement or sounds. Don’t worry if it seems minor. With something like this, you never know.”

With that, they split off from Liam and Zayn. Louis’ got the radio and the field kit, Niall has the plaster cast set, and Harry’s been given the first aid kit. Louis thinks that’s the least dangerous thing to give him to carry.

It’s slow, tedious, hard work, is the thing, and though Louis is used to it, it doesn’t make it any more fun. Harry, bless him, makes a valiant effort to keep their spirits up.

“We’re looking for the Loch Ness monster! If we can prove it exists, we’ll be famous!” he exclaims every time Niall so much as huffs a little too heavily. Normally Louis would be glad for the constant morale boost, but it gets old after the first hour, and finally he snaps at Harry to “please, for the love of all that might be real in this world, stop talking and start looking a bit harder.” He doesn’t mean to be short, he really doesn’t, but talking distracts them from the task at hand, and Louis doesn’t want to waste any time.

They’re making their way along the shore at about a mile and a half per hour, which isn’t too bad considering how carefully they’re searching. As they leave town, the houses get farther apart, but boathouses still dot the shores. No leads have turned up yet, though, so Louis stops them after an hour and a half to get in contact with Liam.

“Hey, any luck on your side?”

Liam’s voice comes back crackly but audible. “No, anything from you?”

“Nothing yet. We’re only three miles up the coast, though.”

There’s rustling on Liam’s end, then: “Alright. We’re a little farther than that. But nothing. Let us know if you find something or when you’re turning back. We’ll meet back at the hotel.”

“Over and out, sir.” Louis salutes, even though Liam can’t see him, and shoves the radio back into the bag.

“Hey, what’s this?” Harry’s voice calls from somewhere over to Louis’ left. He and Niall hurry over, boots squelching in the muck.

“Jesus, Harry,” Niall breathes.

There, clear as day, is a footprint that definitely doesn’t belong to a human.

“Fucking…” Louis fumbles with the radio before getting it up to his mouth and jabbing at the button. “Liam. Liam, come in. We’ve got something.”

Niall already has the cast kit on the ground and open. Louis hands Harry the field kit, telling him to take a photo, while static comes through the speaker.

“What is it?” Liam says.

“It’s a footprint. We’re getting photos and a cast made now,” Louis tells him while Harry snaps photos of the print. “Hey, Haz. Use the zoom on the camera, don’t get too close to it.”

Static. “What’s that?”

“Sorry, was talking to Haz. Anything on your end?”

“Um, we’ve hit Urquhart Castle, but nothing that we’ve found. Have you noticed anything strange going on on the water?”

Shit. Louis hadn’t even thought about that. He lies. “No. We’ll keep looking, though. See you back at the hotel. Over and out.” He shoves the radio back into the bag before Liam gets a chance to respond.

Niall is kneeling in the mud, mixing the plaster, while Harry cuts a piece of cardboard to put around the print. “Jesus, Lou, this print’s fucking big.”

“I know, right? Definitely nothing like I’ve seen.”

It has to be at least a foot and a half long and and a foot wide, if Louis has to estimate. Off the top of his head, he can’t think of anything living in the loch that makes a print that large. Of course, it could be another hoax created for attention or a lark, but he’s going to treat everything they find as potential evidence.

It’ll take an hour for the plaster cast to dry, which slows them down considerably, but Louis decides to take Harry and go down toward the shore while Niall takes care of the cast.

They’re still not that far out of town, so as they near the shore there’s a trio of boathouses, each painted a different colour. Nobody seems to be around, though, so Louis picks his way through the grasses to get to the water line and stands there looking out, one hand over his eyes to keep the sun out.

“What’s that?” Harry points out at the water.

“Where?”

“Out near the middle of the loch.” Harry comes to stand right behind Louis so the other boy can see where he’s pointing.

Louis follows Harry’s finger. “Oh, s’just a breeze.”

“Really? I mean...some of the reports had people seeing, like, waves and stuff on the surface when it wasn’t windy.”

“Yeah, but it’s windy now. Good catch, though, keep an eye on that for now.”

By the time the cast is dry, Louis and Harry have meticulously picked through every square inch of ground between the print and the shore only to come up with nothing.

“All good, then?” Louis asks Niall, who’s packing up the kit.

“Mhm. Look.” Niall holds up the cast for the two of them to see. The plaster has captured the print perfectly, and Louis knows this is a huge discovery. Of course, it could turn out to be a hoax print, but it’s well worth looking into.

“Ace, good work, Niall. Have you got the time?”

“Almost noon. Should we start going back?”

Louis nods after a moment’s thought. “Yeah. Don’t want to risk anything happening to it, and we’ve got the rest of the time to do more. We’ll head back early and I’ll tell Liam.” He pulls the radio out again and pokes at the buttons until he hears it beep. “Hey, Li. The cast is done, so we’re gonna head back early. How far are you?”

“A bit past the castle. Do you want us to keep going?”

“It’s up to you. I can start sending some of this stuff back to Josh and George, have them start doing some digging on what we’ve got.”

There’s some static before Liam responds again. “We’re gonna stay out and aim to be back by five. Think you can get stuff done?”

Louis rolls his eyes, even though he knows Liam can’t see him. “Course we can, don’t worry, Mum.”

“Louis…” Liam warns, but Louis laughs into the radio to cut him off.

“Whatever, I know. See you back at the hotel. Over and out, Mum.” Louis drops the radio back into the bag while Liam is still squawking at him through the static. He’ll get hell from Liam tonight, probably, but right now, they’ve got work to do.

Once they’re back at the hotel, they separate just long enough to shower off the muck and grass before reconvening in Louis’ room. Louis’ sat on the sofa with his laptop open on his lap and the cast lying on a towel on the coffee table in front of him, and Niall and Harry trail in a few minutes later.

“Right. So I took some photos of the cast and sent them back to London, and George just texted me saying they’ll Facetime in a half hour, yeah?” Louis tells them, moving his computer onto the table next to the cast.

“Um…” Harry timidly raises his hand like he’s in school.

“Uh, yeah?” Louis raises an eyebrow at him.

“Who’s George?” Harry asks like he’s embarrassed.

“Oh, shit, that’s right. George and Josh are like our research and analysis team. We send them photos and stuff of what we find, and usually one of them comes to wherever we are to look at it in person if it’s a promising lead.”

“They don’t work in the shop, do they?”

Niall shakes his head. “Nah, not really. You might have seen George pop in and out, though, ‘cause he does come in from time to time when we’re working on a case. You might recognise him when he comes up.”

“Can I see it?” Harry points to the cast, and Louis nods. The younger boy picks up the plaster cast like he’s afraid it’ll crumble into dust in his hands. “This is so cool.”

“It’s massive,” Louis comments. “And judging by the mud we found it in, it couldn’t have been made too long ago. I would say probably overnight, since the mud hadn’t dried very much.”

“Exactly,” Niall agrees. “So if it was recent, then we’ve got a really good chance of catching this thing, or at least seeing it.”

“Or someone knows we’re here and is just fucking with us,” Louis mutters darkly.

“Would people really do that?” Harry mumbles, brows knitting together. “I mean, what’s the point?”

Louis sighs. “It’s amazing how much time some people have to be dicks,” he says right as his laptop begins to ring with the sound of an incoming Facetime call. “Oh, fuck, they’re early.”

“Here.” Niall reaches over Louis to accept the call as Harry plops down on Louis’ other side and stretches his long legs out onto the table. “Hey, lads! How you doing?”

George’s face smiles back at them from Louis’ screen, curly hair messy and hanging in his eyes. “Hi! We got your photos, Lou, thanks. I printed them out and enlarged them a bit to get a good look at them. Josh is here with me, he’s just in the kitchen doing...actually, I don’t know what he’s doing. Josh, get your arse over here!” he calls, leaning out of the frame to shout into the kitchen.

Josh’s voice comes back broken and disembodied, and George rolls his eyes. Louis can’t help a laugh—they’re so sickeningly cute together on top of being a great team. For a few seconds, there’s a flurry of movement on the other side of the screen, and the computer lags for a few seconds before it unfreezes to reveal both boys sitting on the sofa, George’s legs thrown over Josh’s lap with the photos in his hand.

“Hey, lads, you alright?” Josh asks, resting his chin on George’s shoulder to get a look at the photos. “Nice photos.”

“Thanks, thanks. Did you get a chance to look at them?” Louis shifts so Niall can squeeze his face into the frame.

“Yeah, we’ve been looking at them. Christ, that’s a massive print,” George remarks, swatting Josh’s hands away from the photos.

“We said the same thing. I know you just got them, but have you got any ideas on what it might be?” Niall asks.

Josh shakes his head, while George says, “Not yet, but we’re gonna keep looking. Have you heard about that hoax from a few decades ago where they found massive prints like this one and later they found out it was made by some person with some piece of furniture with a hippopotamus foot base or something?”

Louis can see Niall’s blank look in the little window at the bottom of the screen. “No, but Liam probably has. Zayn too, I bet.”

“Just mentioning it. Good to keep those in mind. But this one’s definitely not a hippopotamus foot—this looks like it has some kind of talon-like things on the foot, and it’s far larger.”

“I noticed that. Almost like claws of some kind.”

“Like a dragon!” Harry exclaims excitedly from Louis’ left side.

Josh blinks. “Yeah, sure,” he says with a slow nod. “We’ll keep looking into it though, and we’ll ring you again tomorrow and let you know what we found. We might want to come up and have a look at the cast, too, so if we do that it’ll be more middle of the week, yeah?”

“Sounds okay. See you, then.” Louis hangs up and picks up the cast again, turning it over in his hands. He can see the marks that George had described as talon-like, and yeah, Harry’s kind of right. It’s just like the drawings of dragons that he’s seen, and he’s never in his life come across any footprint this big. He doesn’t want to get his hopes up, though—it’s all too easy to convince himself that what he’s seeing is proving his beliefs right—so he refrains from commenting further on it until Liam gets back, instead ordering tea brought up to the room.

Liam comes into the room around half four, skin sweaty and clothes reeking of the slick mud from the loch shores. “Right then, what’d you find?” he asks, kicking his wellies off just inside the door.

“Where’s Zayn?” Niall asks, polishing off the rest of his tea.

“In the other room having a shower. Did you talk to George and Josh?”

Louis recounts the conversation while Harry hands Liam the plaster cast. “We’ll get in touch with them tomorrow, then, and they said they’ll let us know what they find out. For now, we’ll keep scouting. Anything on your end?” Louis asks.

Liam runs his fingertips over the raised print in the plaster. “Nothing like this, but we ran into a fisherman who said he’d reported a sighting in about a week and a half ago. Something strange moving under his boat. He said reports are way up all of a sudden—he went into the Loch Ness Monster Centre to make an official report and there was a load of people.”

“Just as Aiden said,” Louis says, half to himself.

“Well, you know what they say. Think we’ve got our work cut out for us, haven’t we?”

“You can say that again.”

~

  
They go back to the same small restaurant for dinner, at which Liam announces he’s gotten in touch with Simon to get them access to a helicopter. Louis shares the details of his conversation with George and Josh, and Harry and Zayn fill in the details of each side’s explorations.

The next three days pass in a similar fashion. They drive to other towns around the loch, talk to locals, and scour the banks for other clues. But nothing turns up; it seems the first day was the luckiest.

All that George and Josh have to say is that “this print does not belong to any animal on record,” according to Josh. “We’ve never seen anything like it. Definitely something that could be important.”

Friday morning, Louis wakes up alone in the bed. Liam’s left a note on his bedside table, telling Louis that he’s gone out to try and borrow a boat for the day. Louis nods to himself and goes about his morning as usual, meeting the rest of the lads downstairs for breakfast.

Aiden is there at the table, and Louis grins widely as he sees him. “Morning, then, you coming with us today?” Louis asks.

Aiden shrugs. “I don’t know what you’re doing.”

Zayn looks at Louis. “Did Liam tell you?”

“Yeah, he said he’s gonna try and get us a boat for the day,” Louis says, carefully pouring tea into his cup. He doesn’t miss the face Zayn makes, and he gets an idea. “Hey, Aiden. Did you talk to any locals yesterday?”

“No,” Aiden admits, and he has the decency to look sheepish about it. “I was going to today, though.”

“Perfect. Take Zayn with you, ‘cause we’ll be on the water.”

Both Zayn and Aiden light up at the idea, and Louis sits back, happy with his problem-solving skills. See, he can make responsible decisions sometimes.

Zayn and Aiden set out shortly after, leaving Louis, Niall, and Harry to head down toward the pier to check on the boat situation. They’re just about there when suddenly, they’re accosted by a tall man with a dark quiff and a notepad in his hands.

“Hi, Louis Tomlinson? Nick Grimshaw with the _Highland_ _Free_ _Press_. Do you have time for a few questions?” he rattles off all in one breath.

“We’re a bit busy here, mate, but maybe later.” Louis tries to brush him off, but the reporter—Nick—takes a step to the side, effectively blocking his path. Louis scowls at how much taller he is.

“I’ll only be a minute. How did you hear about the latest wave of Loch Ness Monster sightings? How long are you planning on staying? What methods will you be using?”

Nick just keeps asking questions, and it is honestly too early in the morning for Louis to be this annoyed. “We said no, mate,” Niall speaks up, tugging on Louis’ shirt to try and pull him around the reporter.

They get around Nick, but Louis hears footsteps behind them. He doesn’t have to turn around to know who it is. “Would you fuck off, please?” he calls, not looking back. The footsteps don’t cease, though, and Louis is ten seconds away from clocking him in the head. “Just don’t acknowledge him,” he mutters to the others, who all nod. They find Liam standing with an older man of about sixty, with a wild grey beard.

“Oi, Li!” Louis calls with a grin, and Liam turns to look at him.

“Hey, Lou, you’re all here! This is Alastair, one of the, uh, blokes who does the Loch Ness Monster cruises. Simon talked to him and he’s gonna let us use one of their boats.”

Louis puts on his best charming, polite grin. “Hello, sir! Thank you so, so much for letting us borrow your boat. It’ll be a massive help.”

Alastair smiled back and waved. “No problem, lads. Anything for fellow Nessie enthusiasts. Liam here told me all about your business.”

“And...who is your friend?” Liam motions vaguely to something behind Louis.

Louis sighs. “This is not a friend, this is a reporter.”

Nick slips out from behind Louis to get in front of Liam and try to shake his hand. “Hi, Nick Grimshaw with the _Highland Free Press._ Do you have time for a—”

“No, Nick, we do not. Now will you _kindly_ leave us alone so we can do our job?”

Nick gives him a sour look. “This is _my_ job.”

“Well, your job is getting in the way of my job, and I’ve asked you to fuck off twice, so will you please?”

Liam, sensing one of Louis’ snippy fits coming on, quietly leads Alastair several feet away. Louis uses the opportunity to continue sniping at Nick. “What part of ‘fuck off’ do you not understand?”

“Listen, pet, I need to make a living just as you.”

It’s the pet name that catches Louis off-guard. “You’re from the north, aren’t you?”

“Oldham.”

“Doncaster.”

“Look at us, a couple of northern mates, aren’t we?”

“Yeah—wait, no, you’re still pissing me off.”

“You know, all this time we’ve been arguing you could have been answering my questions,” Nick points out.

Louis rolls his eyes again. “You are the shittiest reporter I have ever met.”

Nick shrugs. “I’m usually much better, but then again, usually my interviewees are more cooperative.”

“You’re an arse.”

“I might be, but I’d like yours.”

Louis’ jaw, already partially open for a retort, drops completely. Is Nick... _hitting_ on him? In the middle of this argument? “Are you fucking hitting on me?” is all that comes out.

Louis really shouldn’t be so annoyed by the way that Nick shrugs again, but he is. “Maybe,” Nick says serenely.

Louis huffs, but the wheels are turning in his head. Maybe if he sleeps with Nick just once, he can get the nosy reporter out of the way for the rest of the time. _Maybe._ “How’s this. You get me arse tonight, you stay out of the fucking way as long as we’re here.”

Nick flips his notepad closed. “Can we throw in just one quick interview?”

“One question.”

“Five.”

“Three.”

“Fine.”

Louis grins, triumphant. “Meet me at the pub tonight, half eight,” he tells Nick, before turning his back and sauntering back toward Liam, making a mental note to tell his boyfriend about this later. He’ll understand, surely.

~

The boat is, in Louis’ word, “sick.” And that’s exactly what it is. There are all kinds of instruments onboard, instruments that Louis doesn’t know but Liam seems to. The only one Louis recognises is the sonar. Alastair is going with them, because he’s the one who knows how to drive the boat and to help with the instruments that the rest of them don’t know how to work.

Once Alastair gives them a quick briefing as to where everything is on the boat, Liam steps into the leadership role of the four of them. He puts Harry in charge of distributing life vests, Niall in charge of port side observations, and Louis in charge of the starboard side.

“And where are you gonna go?” Louis ribs him gently.

“With Alastair. Actually wait. Lou, you do the life vests and put Haz in charge of the starboard side, and come and join us up front when you’re done.”

“And leave Haz and Niall out here by themselves?” Louis widens his eyes and gives Liam a look.

“They’ll be fine. Come on, now.” Liam pats him on the back.

Louis chucks life vests at Harry and Niall before jogging up to join Liam and Alastair in the cabin. “So what have we got, then?”

Alastair ends up putting him in charge of monitoring the down scanning sonar, while Liam keeps track of the side scanning sonar and Alastair chatters away. Normally, Louis tunes people out when they chatter away, but Alastair is interesting. Louis learns that he’s 67 and grew up in Drumnadrochit.

“Always was curious about what was going on under this surface of these waters, you know?” he says, carefully steering the boat through the calm waters.

“Us, too! Well, kind of,” Louis says, glancing back down at the screen. “We’ve always been interested in the stuff that can’t be explained. S’how we ended up here looking for the monster. We started in the ghost business, actually.”

“Ghosties?” Alastair cackled. “Where?”

“The dorm at our uni. Funny, innit?” Louis grins.

It’s a nice day out on the water, and Alastair is good company, but unfortunately nothing comes of it, even though they spend the majority of the day cruising up and down the loch. The sonar devices don’t pick up a thing, and neither Niall nor Harry sees a single thing on either side.

By the time Alastair pulls back into the docks, it’s past the time Louis had told Zayn they’d meet at the restaurant for dinner. He rings Zayn to tell them they’ll be late while Liam thanks Alastair profusely and offers to buy him dinner. Alastair refuses at first, but finally caves when Liam insists on buying him dinner at the end of the week. Smart move; they’ll probably be using Alastair’s boat rather other over the course of the trip.

As they’re heading back toward the hotel, Louis remembers what he had to tell Liam from earlier. God, the day has been so long he almost forgot. “Oh, and uh, remind me to speak to you about something later when we get back.”

~

“You want to what?” Liam whisper-shouts as they come back into their hotel room after dinner.

“Liam, please. Just listen. He said if I sleep with him tonight, just this one time, he’ll leave us alone,” Louis tells him.

“And how do you know he’ll keep that promise?”

“Well...technically I don’t,” Louis admits.

Liam sighs. “If you wanted to fuck him, you could just say so and not...make up this whole thing.”

“Liam, you’ve met him. Do you really think he’s really the kind I’d want to pull if I were out?” Louis crosses his arms.

“So what’s he going to tell his paper when he can’t get the story and has to make one up that’s completely wrong?”

“Well, I told him I’d answer three questions for him, so that won’t happen.”

Liam is quiet for a long time, just sitting on the bed staring at his folded hands. Then, with another sigh, he stands up and crosses the room. “Alright,” he says softly, tugging gently at Louis’ elbows to try and get him to uncross his arms. “I’ll stay in the other room. You bring him back to this one.”

Louis lets a small smile creep onto his face. “You’re the best, babe,” he tells Liam, leaning up to press a quick peck to his cheek. “You know I’m always yours.”

“Yeah, I know.”

~

Louis shows up at the bar a quarter to nine, silently cursing himself for being late. Maybe Nick’s given up on him by now. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he mutters, running a nervous hand through his hair as he walks into the pub by himself. He’d even dressed up a bit, put on the t-shirt with the low neck and the jeans that make his arse look incredible. Hell, if he has to sleep with someone to make them go away, he may as well go for it full stop.

“Well, hello, Tomlinson.”

Louis whirls around at the voice in his ear. “Jesus, Nick, scare a man a bit more.”

“Don’t some people find fear arousing?”

Louis rolls his eyes. Of course Nick would say something that simultaneously lewd and ridiculous.

“Your eyes are going to fall out if you keep rolling them, petal.”

“They haven’t fallen out just yet, so don’t hold your breath, babe,” Louis shoots back, leaning against the bar and waving the barkeep over. “What d’you want?”

“Let me take care of it. Two whiskeys, please.”

Louis isn’t even a fan of whiskey, but he downs it anyway. And another, and another. He figures he’ll need them. And it doesn’t hurt—with every drink, Nick gets funnier and more attractive, and Louis gets flirtier and louder. Next thing he knows he’s pressed his body against Nick’s, giggling into his shoulder while Nick tells some story that Louis would probably never find funny if he were sober.

“You’re so pissed, duck,” Nick whispers to Louis, and Louis only throws his head back and laughs.

“Let’s go back now, ‘kay?” Louis giggles out.

“Yeah, alright.”

Together, they stumble back to Louis’ room and fall into bed in a mess of limbs and stifled groans. The alcohol’s made his face feel hot, and combined with Nick’s hands on his face and his waist Louis is more than happy to let Nick undress him and lay him out on the soft sheets while he chuckles to himself.

Nick is much nicer like this, Louis thinks, naked and kissing down his chest and not ribbing him with every other word out of his mouth.

He lets Nick flip him over and fuck him into the mattress as he moans, high and slutty, back arched and fingers gripping the sheets. His head is a mess and he doesn’t think he’ll remember much of this in the morning and he’ll probably wake up with some difficulty walking or something, but he just knows it feels fucking incredible. Louis passes out with his face in the pillows and Nick sprawled out next to him.

The morning dawns along with Louis’ extremely sore arse. He groans, rolling onto his back and immediately regretting it.

At least Nick didn’t just up and leave in the middle of the night. Louis jabs at Nick’s shoulder until he wakes up. “Nick, the fuck did we do last night?”

Nick blinks languidly before smiling. “I did you.”

“Yeah, well, my arse doesn’t always hurt like…” He trails off and his jaw drops as he registers exactly what happened the night before. “Did you fucking spank me?”

Nick just keeps grinning. God, it’s too early to be this irritated. “Would you blame me? Wanted to see that bum of yours turn red for me.”

Louis literally wants to gag, and he tells Nick exactly that. “Right, so we fucked this once and it will not happen again. I’m in a relationship, you know.”

Nick freezes; Louis can feel the mood turn frigid in seconds. “You what?” For once, he sounds serious.

“Oh! No, no, I didn’t cheat on him. It’s like, we’re in an open relationship.”

“An open relationship,” Nick repeats, turning on his side to face Louis properly. “Does he know about this?”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry. It’s Liam, I’m with Liam.” Louis tries to bite back a yawn and ends up muffling it in the pillow.

“Liam. Liam Payne? Your coworker? You’re dating your coworker?”

Louis groans and lets himself flop back against the pillow. “Yes. Well, no. We were dating before we went into business together and it’s been going great. This is way more questions than we agreed to, you know.”

They end up doing the interview over breakfast, when they’ve both had some caffeine and are somewhat more sober. Nick asks Louis about how he got interested in the paranormal, and Louis tells the same story he told Alastair about the ghost in the uni dorm. Then it’s a bit about what they’ve been doing to search for the monster, and they wrap up with a plug for the business. Nick tries to wheedle more information about what they’ve found so far from Louis, but Louis just presses his lips together and shakes his head. They never reveal anything until the investigation is complete.

Nick goes back home to Inverness just as George and Josh arrive in town. Louis is still slightly hungover, but at least his head isn’t pounding anymore.

The eight of them—Louis, Liam, Zayn, Harry, Niall, Aiden, Josh, and George—convene in the lobby to meet up and check in with each other. Zayn and Aiden have been interviewing locals, trying to see where the most sightings have been as of late so the rest of them know where to look. George and Josh still haven’t found an existing match for the print, and the rest of them don’t have anything new to report. The only good thing to come out of this is that at least, thanks to Zayn and Aiden, they can narrow their search. It turns out most of the sightings have been in the water, so Liam decides to abandon the rest of the shore search and focus their efforts on the water. They’ll be seeing a lot more of Alastair, that’s for certain.

Louis and Liam take George and Josh out with Alastair that day, but again, nothing happens. They’ve been on the water for hours with only schools of fish showing up on the sonar. Disappointed but not discouraged, Louis asks Alastair to take them back to shore, and that’s when it happens.

George, who’s joined them in the cabin, suddenly starts to shake Louis’ shoulder. “The hell is that?”

The down scanning sonar shows something directly under the boat.

“Fucking—Josh, Liam, go port and starboard and see if you see anything!” Louis shouts, blinking hard as though he’s imagining things. But when he opens his eyes again, the screen is still much more colourful than it had been all day. “Jesus…Alastair?”

The old man shakes his head. “Haven’t seen activity like this in decades. Too dense to be more fish, and it’s deep.”

George has his phone out, taking a video of the sonar, and Louis makes a mental note to thank him later. “Louis, are you seeing this?” he exclaims. “Look, it’s getting closer!”

“Holy shit!” Louis’ jaw drops again as he watches the red blob on the screen get closer and closer to the surface. Out on the desk, Josh swears loudly.

“I see something!”

“Film it!” Louis screams back, unable to take his eyes away as the sonar continues to pick up on _whatever it is._ Then, just as soon as it appeared, it leaves the screen. Louis isn’t sure if he imagines the boat swaying and rocking a bit more than it had been.

“Jesus…”

The second they’re back on land, Liam calls for the entire team to meet again, this time in his and Louis’ room. The four on the boat take turns excitedly recounting what they saw and playing their videos for everyone to see. Josh’s is an iPhone-quality shot of the water, but it’s clear something’s under the surface. George’s would prove to be useful and harder to explain away.

They spend the rest of the day devising what Liam calls a plan, Niall refers to as a trap, Harry likens to a fishing trip, and Louis calls the most elaborate thing they’ve ever come up with. Zayn just calls it his greatest idea yet, and that’s fair: he thought up every bit of it. It’s so complicated that they need to start setting it up now. Louis tries to write it all down, but once Liam starts talking sonar again he gives up, abandoning his notes and starting to doodle in the margins of his paper again.

In short, it goes like this. Zayn will be in a helicopter—the helicopter that Liam managed to neglect ever getting access to, so thanks a lot, Liam—with Aiden. They’ll have three boats in the water: one with Louis, Niall, George, Josh, and Alastair, and the other two trailing a massive net that’s some cross between a modified trawling net and a gillnet across the width of the loch. The plan is for the two boats to start at the far end and slowly make their way down the loch; Liam figures if they start at one end, they can restrict the monster to one side of the loch.

Harry’s assigned to one of the trawling boats, Liam the other. Some of Alastair’s friends will be on the trawling boats per Louis’ request. Mainly to look out for Harry. Louis will be the first to acknowledge that Harry has been extremely helpful on the trip, but he will also be the first to acknowledge that the boy can have the grace of a cooked noodle stood on one end. They need all the help they can get.

~

They’re up at the crack of dawn the next morning to start putting the plan into action. Liam is in full commander mode, handing out the radios, directing everyone into the right boat and making sure Zayn and Aiden are headed toward where they’re supposed to get the helicopter. It’s far too early to be awake, but Louis had dragged himself out of bed with the promise of tea and the glory that will inevitably come with their infallible plan to document and/or catch the Loch Ness Monster once and for all.

It’s a cold morning even for the middle of the summer when the sun’s up at unnatural hours. So Louis bundles himself up, wraps his hands around a thermos of tea, grabs his shit, and sets out. By the time he’s on the boat with the rest of the boys plus Alastair, he’s very awake.

“It’s a good morning on the loch today,” Alastair says gleefully, adjusting his hat over his balding head. Louis doesn’t think he’s ever seen the man less than jovial. “No wind and the sky’s clear. So the chances are good that if we see ripples or movement under the water, it’ll probably be something interesting.”

“Good. Niall, starboard! George, port! Josh, go astern! I need cameras out, wrist straps on, and keep your fucking eyes open, got that?” Louis claps twice and everyone scatters. Liam doesn’t have shit on him, he thinks to himself as he gets his own camera out and plops himself in the chair in front of the sonar display screens. “Been thinking about that thing we saw yesterday, though. What other explanations have there been for stuff like that?”

“Usually fish, or submerged boats,” Alastair tells him. “Sometimes they say they’re eels or some kind of shark. But I never buy ‘em. The loch’s about 400 feet deep on average, 700-something at the deepest point. And d’you remember how fast the sonar picked something up yesterday? No eel swims that fast.”

Louis nods, eyes locked on the sonar device in front of him. His camera—the nice Canon that he’d splashed out on last year for quality photos—sits on his lap, his index fingertip rubbing nervously over the release button. He can’t stop bouncing his foot, and he’s just glad the boat is loud enough to cover the sound of his shoe tapping against the metal footrest.

The last time he was this excited about a case was a year and a half ago, when some lady in Belgravia who had set up a faery garden for her goddaughter only to find evidence that actual faeries had moved in. Louis refers to it as their own scandal in Belgravia, which drives Liam mad because he apparently has not seen that episode of _Sherlock_ and feels left out of the reference.

“Liam and Glen, two o’clock.” Alastair points to where Liam’s boat has begun trawling. “But...where’s your Harold friend?”

“Harry? He should have…” Louis gets up and leans over the port side railing, trying to look for Harry’s boat. All he sees is open water. “Aw, fucking hell. Where is that boy?”

“Louis!” George yells up to him, pointing somewhere behind them. “That them?”

Louis walks over to stand next to George to see what he’s talking about. There’s a boat near the shore, yes, and Louis is pretty sure he can see Harry standing on the deck with Alastair’s friend Sean. “Oh, yeah. Guess they just got a bit of a late start. They’re coming now.” As soon as he says the words, he gets static over his radio. He presses the button. “This is Louis, come in?”

He doesn’t recognise the voice right away. “Um, this is Sean. Harry is having a wee bit of a problem.”

“Oh, fuck,” Louis says into the radio, forgetting to take his finger off the button. “What’s the problem.”

“Have a look.”

Louis accepts a pair of binoculars from George and peers through them, only to swear again.

Their net isn’t in the water yet, because Harry has managed to tangle himself in it.

“That’s what we fucking get for using a net that fucking big,” Louis grumbles, shoving the radio back in his pocket while struggling to adjust the binoculars. All he can do is shake his head. “I send him with someone who knows what’s he’s doing and Harry still gets caught in the net.”

“Problem solved, Harry’s the Loch Ness Monster!” George crows with a laugh.

“I swear to god, if he fucks this up I’m never eating another one of his cupcakes ever again.”

Three things happen at the same time. Harry stands up only to trip over the net again, Josh starts screaming, and there’s a loud swear followed very quickly by a splash.

“Lou, something’s coming!” Josh waves his arms.

“Tomlinson, the sonar!” Alastair shouts.

“Niall!” George screams, rushing to the starboard side and almost throwing himself over the side.

Louis can’t figure out who to run to first. So first, he shoves his already-recording phone into Alastair’s hand, and tells him to film the sonar device. Next he screams at Josh to get his camera out, then he can attend to George and—“Where the bloody _fuck_ is Niall?” he yells.

George squawks out something that doesn’t sound like a word and points some more.

There, flailing in the water in his bright orange life vest, is Niall. “Lou! Chuck me the—a rope or a tube thing or something, I don’t care but I think something’s coming!”

Normally, Louis would laugh it off as Niall being dramatic and funny, but combined with Josh screaming about seeing something in the water and the bright red blob on the sonar device, Louis is on high alert. “Hang on, we’ll get you! George, get the lifebuoy!” Louis jabs an elbow into George’s side and almost immediately regrets it. Still, he fumbles with his camera, looping the strap around his neck and scanning the water for anything he might be able to see under the surface.

“Louis!” Josh yells again, and Louis turns toward him.

What happens next is something out of a movie. Just under the surface of the water is something moving far faster than the boat. All Louis can make out is something very large and very shiny, and it’s heading right toward Niall.

The lifebuoy goes flying over Louis’ head and lands in the water with a dull splat. Niall flails and latches on. “Pull me in, pull me in!”

George reels in like he’s fishing while Josh comes up behind both of them with his video camera pressed up to his eye. “I’m getting this, I’m getting this.”

“You’re ace— _what_ _the fuck?”_ Louis had thought he’d been done dropping his jaw over the course of this trip, but this instance takes the cake.

The large shiny thing breaks the surface of the water and Louis can get a good look at it. It’s a dull green-grey colour with scales the size of Louis’ palm and a nearly translucent spiny dorsal fin. It doesn’t match anything known to live in the loch, except…

“It’s Nessie herself!” Alastair exclaims from the cabin.

“Fuckin’ help me!” Niall’s voice is getting high and genuinely panicked as George pulls him back on deck. “Jesus fuck, I can’t believe this! Ya let me fall off the boat right when the fuckin’ monster comes by!”

Louis’ radio crackles. It’s Liam. “This is Liam, what’s going on? Louis, come in? Louis?”

“A little busy here, Li!” Louis replies, trying to balance his camera and snap some photos. The thing isn’t even shy, it just keeps arcing its long body out of the water like some kind of dolphin. “Jesus, you are _not_ going to believe this.”

“Nobody’s gonna believe this, mate,” Josh whispers, sounding very much in disbelief himself.

Later, Louis would estimate the monster stayed for almost four whole minutes, which, for a paranormal creature sighting, is abnormal. But finally, finally, the creature disappears back below the water and doesn’t resurface again. The loch is still once more, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

For a long minute, everyone on the boat is as still as the water. Alastair has turned off the engine to let the boat drift silently.

“Did that...seriously just happen?” Niall whispers.

“Yeah. And!” Josh holds up the camera. “I got an incredible video. Want to see it?”

Excited, they crowd around Josh to see the video, and holy _shit._ There’s no denying that the creature caught on film is no creature the world has ever seen before.

Louis’ heart feels like it’s beating double-time. They’ve solved a centuries’-old mystery in a little over a week. They’re sitting on the biggest discovery of their lives. He knows that once they reveal it, everything will be absolute madness. They’ll be questioned, doubted, and written about, but Louis can’t really find it in himself to care. All he can feel is pride.

They’ll deal with the media circus when they get back. Right now, the first thing to deal with is taking the piss out of Niall for falling off the boat, so that’s exactly what he does.

 

**Author's Note:**

> and that is that! please leave a comment and tell me what you thought of it, or if you're so inclined say hi to me on [tumblr](http://maybetheyrefireproof.tumblr.com/)!


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